The New Judicial Conservatism

The New York Times has analyzed 10,025 federal court decisions from 2017 to 2019 to see how the president's appointees are doing in terms of partisanship. His judges are partisan.

The NYT writes: “One new judge, who had held a political job in the Trump administration, dissented on an issue of particular importance to the president: disclosure of his financial records. The judge, Neomi Rao, opposed a decision requiring the release of the documents to a congressional committee, a mandate the president continues to resist and is now before the Supreme Court.

“They have long records of standing up, and they’re not afraid of being unpopular,” said Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative advocacy group that has pushed for the mold-breaking appointments. Ms. Severino once served as a law clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas, one of the Supreme Court’s most reliably conservative members.

‘The problem as I see it is not that judges differ ideologically — of course they do — nor is it that a Republican president would look for someone with congenial ideological preferences,’ Mr. Burbank said. ‘It’s that in recent decades the search has been for hard-wired ideologues because they’re reliable policy agents.’

When Mr. Trump took office there were 103 unfilled federal court openings, in addition to a Supreme Court seat, in part because Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader of the Senate, and allies had refused to proceed with confirming many of Mr. Obama’s nominees. The last time so many vacancies had been left to a successor of the opposing party was when the federal bench was expanded by dozens of judges under President George H.W. Bush.”

There really are Trump judges and judges from other presidents. Maybe it is reasonable to see federal judges the president has appointed as politicians in black robes who cannot be voted out of office.